Waist deep in the big muddy: Memorial Day 2005 edition

[This was actually written yesterday (Memorial Day), but Blogger, in its usual inimitable fashion, choked on the publish.]


Today in Iraq:

Two suicide bombers blew themselves up Monday in a crowd of police officers south of Baghdad, killing up to 30 people and wounding dozens, and an Iraqi aircraft with four Americans and an Iraqi on board crashed in eastern Iraq.

Also Monday, U.S. forces mistakenly detained a Sunni political leader on the second day of an Iraqi-led security sweep in the capital.

The Iraqi aircraft carrying four U.S. personnel and one Iraqi crashed sometime before noon during an operational mission, the military said in a statement, but it did not say what type of aircraft was involved or whether those on board had died.

U.S.-led coalition forces had secured the area where the aircraft when down in the eastern province of Diyala and the crash was "under investigation," the military said. It also said the crash was reported to a joint communication center in the town of Khanaqin, near the border with Iran.

Mohsen Abdul-Hamid, head of Iraq's largest Sunni Arab political party and short-time president of the now-dissolved U.S.-backed Iraqi Governing Council, was taken from his home in western Baghdad at about 6 a.m. by military forces, party officials said.

The U.S. military later confirmed it had mistakenly arrested Abdul-Hamid, questioned him and released him shortly after.

President George W. Delusional, today at Arlington National Cemetery:

As we look across these acres, we begin to tally the cost of our freedom, and we count it a privilege to be citizens of the country served by so many brave men and women. (Applause.) And we must honor them by completing the mission for which they gave their lives, by defeating the terrorists, advancing the cause of liberty, and building a safer world.

No, we must honor them by bringing to justice via impeachment and removal from office the man, and those around them, who put those young people whose names I posted earlier in harm's way; the men who allowed the United States to be attacked so that George W. Bush could have his war; the men who went into Afghanistan only because it was the only way to get Tony Blair to sign on for the war in Iraq; the men who continue to allow Osama Bin Laden to run free.

That's how we can honor them.